A visit to Liverpool provides an opportunity to trace the footsteps of young Rachel in Greenbanks. In just a few pages, Dorothy Whipple paints a fascinating picture of this bustling, characterful, "cosmopolitan" port city in the 1930s. She clearly knew and liked the city, and no doubt had arrived by train from Blackburn at Liverpool's busy Exchange Station just as Rachel does when she starts life as an "external" student at the University. This major station was closed in 1977 but the 1886 facade remains.

Embroidery has often been a creative refuge and vehicle for self-expression for those who might otherwise not be heard, as it was for John Craske (see yesterday's Post). Lorina Bulwer (1838-1912), another Norfolk embroiderer, was placed by her brother in the asylum of Great Yarmouth Workhouse when she was fifty-five, and here she stitched long letters made into scrolls which articulated her anger at her situation. To those interested in "outsider art" they now look extremely modern and influential. This example is in the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds. 

We continue the theme of pictorial embroidery with this small basket of fish stitched by Norfolk fisherman turned artist John Craske (1881-1943); he also created many maritime scenes and panoramas, including one of the evacuation of Dunkirk. He came to prominence with Julia Blackburn's marvellous book, Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske. As she said here, "He was poor, he was sick, and he was a man who did embroidery – of course he was forgotten". 

Meanwhile, there is an exhibition of embroideries by Mary Linwood (1755-1845) at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, the first since 1945. Mary Linwood was a celebrity in her own time but has been largely forgotten since. Using the technique of needle painting, she created stitched versions of famous British paintings. As well as running a school for young ladies in Leicester, she also exhibited her embroidered works in touring exhibitions, and established the first gallery in London to be run by a woman. This is a stitched self-portrait.

There is an argument for leaving the Bayeux Tapestry in France, and going instead to Reading Museum. Here they have a replica, a project "undertaken by a group of Victorian embroiderers to recreate the Bayeux Tapestry in full, painstakingly reproducing every single detail, stitch-by-stitch, so that the Tapestry's timeless story could be enjoyed by the people of Britain". (Although there are in fact a few differences.)

With the plans to bring the Bayeux Tapestry from France to the British Museum later this year under the spotlight, the subject on the Post this week is embroidery - since  the Bayeux Tapestry is not actually a woven tapestry, but a 70 metre long embroidery worked with wool thread on linen. David Hockney has criticised this as "madness" due to the fragility of the artefact which is more than 900 years old, thus highlighting the issues surrounding preservation and conservation of textiles.